Heather Gold

Toni Morrison explains Charlie Rose’s privilege to him. Slowly.

Toni Morrison patiently schooling Charlie Rose on privilege and offensive questions:

If I’m going to say when are you going to write about Black people to a white writer? If that’s a legitimate question to a white writer then it is a legitimate question to me? I just don’t think it is….As if our lives have no meaning without the white gaze.

The rhythm starts building into this at 2:47 but watch the whole thing. I especially like the raised brow when she says “journalist” to him. Her absolutely profound self-legitimacy of voice (among other things) is inspiring to me. Her standing in her self is beautiful. She holds the moment. She does not seek only to make him comfortable. She does not avoid what is at stake. She does not cede herself in explanation. She holds the space and it is the interviewer who must understand. Toni Morrison creates a very rare genuine moment on television. Video after the jump. I’m trying to keep the pages concise.

Continue reading…

Mike Daisey told the truth and lied to This American Life

Mike is the only other solo performer I know who didn’t “lock” his scripts besides me. Back when he first toured his first big hit Doing Time At Amazon he told me it was difficult to get theatres to allow this. It’s something I do because my shows are interactive and they’re designed to shift every time in part based on who is there. The Agony And The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs is the first script that Mike Daisey locked. He also gives it away for royalty-free performances Creative Commons style.

Locked. As in sure. Air tight. Even in his playbill asserting it is non-fiction. This is perhaps one of the reasons I didn’t go to see the show. But it is now the biggest story in solo performance / performance art (whatever handle it is people like to use to describe telling a story on a stage.) This is what I do ( although I spend a lot of time creating the space for others’ stories and participation). I have not stopped thinking about this revelation of Mike’s lying since I heard about it. And I imagine it will inform my own thinking about my own work for quite some time. The This American Life Retraction Episode in which he is grilled and dissembles and I would say performs, is absolutely riveting. And it is unscripted and all about Mike Daisey. Even when he does his best to say it’s not.

How do you know you matter?

I just got an email from a conference that made me sad. It was only two sentences long. It was a dismissal in the guise of being a favour. It showed me that I didn’t matter to this person professionally anymore. We are done.

It hurt. It still hurts.

When I started out there years back I was just doing what was fun. I never thought of myself as in any kind of “in crowd.” Some people told me then that I was some kind of miniature celebrity in a miniature world. I didn’t see it. But I did feel like I belonged. I felt like I was with my people: the kind of people who were excited by ideas and who said to the new person who showed up at lunch “come on here and sit down.”

This is making me re-think how I learned that what I had to say mattered.
It mattered to me that what I had to say or who I brought together mattered to others. A conference or a show or an audience.

I’m having to learn over and over that what I have to say or do has to matter to me first. it sounds so simple and perhaps brain-dead to you that this is a thing to know or to learn. But it is for me.

In every world I’ve been in: artistic, entrepreneurial, or political everyone wants to know what people like. The truth is that even in the worlds that consider themselves “indie” they care. For me independent performing, publishing, creating business was about being able to follow the creative impulse you have. It was about an environment that preached and modeled empowerment.

You *can* do this.

You are allowed to do this.

I’m the kind of girl who needed to hear that. You can always tell who else needed to hear it: they’ll say it to anyone else, anytime.

Great encouragers of others always need encouragement.

People are always talking about themselves. Always. Whether we know we are talking to ourselves is another story.

I’ve never been a big triangulator of creative talent. Either I like your stories, your voice, your perspective, your jokes, your vulnerability or I don’t. I don’t like it because someone else does (no matter what any database, social media platform or popular kids table might say).

It never made a lot of sense to me to like someone because they were popular. That was true in junior high and it’s true when it comes to indie art too. I’m not interested in someone because they’re alternatively popular. Truth is, the people whose work I often love are often dismissed. But I don’t love someone’s voice or work *because* they’re dismissed. I love what resonates with my heart. That’s all.

It’s easy when I think about other peoples’ work: Justin Vivian Bond, Patti Smith, WhoopDeeDo.tv , Paul Mooney. The kind of folks I want to interview for my news upcoming subvert podcast (you can also follow @subverting on twitter). I’ll be subverting the SXSW conference live with impromptu gatherings. Add me on twitter and foursquare to join. I want to see what’s in your heart.

So why am I afraid of what’s in mine?

Border Town Design Studio: Growing up in Niagara Falls

There’s a great Toronto-based independent design studio run by Emily Horne and Tim Maly called Border Town that I gave a guest talk in a little while ago. I also helped guide them and their participants through the Niagara Fallses, Canadian and American. I’m sure you don’t write the plural of Niagara Falls like that but I don’t care. I like the idea of Fallses.

They asked me to write something to coincide with their upcoming exhibit in Detroit. Here’s my little essay on growing up in Niagara Falls.

The best SXSW Panel: Collaboration is the way of the Net, w/ Allee WIllis Kenyatta Cheese + Mary Jo Pehl

This was my 13th SXSW and this was the most thought and heart-provoking panel I’ve done yet for me personally. The room was almost completely “old timers” (we’re not actually that old, just on the web) and so we went pretty deep, eventually ending up in a place that made me question whether or not money itself would change. WIl we really need it if we fluidly make together and continue the current vector of open making? How will we make it if not?

The audio podcastof the conversation. I’d embed it if SXSW would make that possible.

Since the web began we’ve been talking about artists having a career without a label and going directly to fans. We finally have examples of this working, so what does it look like? I sat down with successful collaborating indie artists: Allee Willis (September, Boogie Wonderland, The Colour Purple, Theme from Friends over 50 million albums sold), Mary Jo Pehl (actor, Mystery Science Theatre 3000, writer RIfftrax, NPR) and Kenyatta Cheese (Know Your Meme) and the super smart room formerly known as the “audience.”

The Net links almost every form of artistic making, so it makes sense that we’re in an era of increasing collaboration and creation in many forms. We discussed how limitations and openness serve us in an era of “personal brands” and how to deal with rights, friendship and creating the best space in which to collaborate. We dug into their collaborative process in making social experiences, music, video and comedy and find out how they’ve succeeded creatively and in every other way.

Highlights that stuck with me (as I recollect them. Not direct quotes):

•My name is Kenyatta Cheese and I am of the web.

• I don’t feel that I can own anything anymore – Kenyatta

• When AOL and MySpace came along I was so upset. But I learned to get over it. It’s ego. You have to let that go to create. The web keeps encouraging you to let go of ego – early social network creator Allee WIllis

•My focus is on the process – Allee WIllis

•What do you really need money for? Will the culture

•This conversation had a major impact on my personal theme that came out of this SXSW: the difference between celebrity and software culture. Post forthcoming.

How do you know someone is a good collaborator for you? Do you think of “everyone/audience” as collaborators and if so what made that thinking happen for you?

tag: #collab

National Gallery has a show of gay and lesbian portraiture and art

 

Walt Whitman, 1891

 

The show, called Hide/Seek includes Eakins, Rauchenberg, Leibovitz, Mapplethorpe and more.

 

Listen to the NPR story on the first queer show at a national museum.

 

“Without gypsies, Jews and fags, there is no art” – Mel Brooks, To Be or Not To Be

 

HT: @ElyseSinger (fb)